Bere Admin January 7th, 2007

In the Evening Standard on 26 January 2007, Fay Sweet said

‘With its glimmering glass pavilion, freshly laid stone and granite paving, a new public square will be unveiled in the capital next Wednesday.

Where once card, motorcycles and lorries wove their way through the tight mesh of streets around Monument in the City, now peace reigns – and it is pedestrians only.

This small oasis in the heart of the Square Mile has been reclaimed to improve the environment and quality of life for City workers. With traffic banished, now there is space to take a break and enjoy the views from the 200ft-tall Monument tower commemorating the Great Fire of London, which began just a spark away in Pudding Lane.

As one of the best of the capital’s 21st century public spaces, the scheme is also featured in a new exhibition celebrating these urban havens.

Monument Square might seem a fairly modest affair, but it is a gem and forms part of a wider vision to improve public spaces throughout the capital. Recent successes include big set-piece schemes such as the pedestrianisation of the north side of Trafalgar Square, while, at the other end of the scale, dozens of tiny pocket gardens have been created on scraps of disused land.

“It’s impossible to overstate the importance of open spaces in London. Not just for our quality of life, but for the local birds, insects and plant diversity,” says architect Justin Bere of bere:architects, which has created the shiny new pavilion that is a sculptural addition to the area, providing much-needed public loos and amenity space for staff at the Monument.

The unusal glass-prism roof gives visitors at the top of the Monument tower an unusual, reflected view of the golden orb at its summit.

The scheme is the latest of more than 50 projects undertaken by the City of London in the past three years. “Because the City is undergoing a building book with growing numbers of people coming to work here, we want to match the quality of new buildings with the public spaces around and in between them,” says Victor Callister, head of the corporation’s ongoing Street Scene Challenge.

The City, with local business sponsors, is spending about ₤5 million a year on upgrading public spaces and is calling on the talents of designers such as Sir Norman Foster, whose projects include works at London Wall and Moorgate, and Eric Parry, with his recently opened Aldermanbury Square.

Callister is particularly pleased with the latest new square. “It’s been chaos at The Monument since 1870, when the Victorians created Monument Street for traffic tracelling between old Billingsgate Market and London Bridge. Now, at last, we have been able to go back to Sir Christopher Wrens vision of making a piazza around this great landmark.”

Meanwhile, drawing together pictures and plans of more than 100 new public gardens, squares and walkways is an exhibition called Public City, at the New London Architecture Gallery. The Show includes schemes at Trafalgar Square – it is almost impossible to remember that traffic used to thunder past the front doors of National Gallery – Brixton Central Square, Triton Square in Camden, a new square at the Old Bailey, Arena Square at Wembley and West Smithfield in Clekenwell.’

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